Tak­ing ad­vant­age of lais­sez-faire mod­er­at­ors in their sixth de­bate, the GOP’s top sev­en pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates spouted talk­ing points that ranged from war­mon­ger­ing to weird.

Sen. Ted Cruz set the tone by duck­ing an open­ing ques­tion on the eco­nomy to de­nounce Obama for Ir­an’s seizure of 10 U.S. sail­ors who ap­par­ently breached Tehran’s ter­rit­ori­al wa­ters. The sail­ors were quickly re­leased after be­ing held at gun­point. One of the men apo­lo­gized in an Ir­a­ni­an pro­pa­ganda video.

If he is elec­ted, Cruz de­clared, no Amer­ic­an ser­vice­man would be forced to his knees, and any coun­try that tried would feel “the full force and fury of the United States.”

The crowd roared in ap­prov­al, but even his sup­port­ers should con­sider the Cruz Doc­trine: The U.S. will go to war against any na­tion that briefly de­tains U.S. mil­it­ary per­son­nel who breach that na­tion’s ter­rit­ory.

Amer­ic­ans are jus­ti­fied to be afraid. Amer­ic­an lead­ers should work to calm the pub­lic. Not these GOP pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates. They’re com­ing to scare us, Amer­ica.

New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie wouldn’t be out­done. He vowed that no U.S. ships would ever fall in­to the hands of “tin-pot” dic­tat­ors.

Former Flor­ida Gov. Jeb Bush de­clared that Demo­crat­ic front-run­ner Hil­lary Clin­ton “would be a na­tion­al se­cur­ity dis­aster.” He cited her role in a string of for­eign flare-ups in­clud­ing the 2012 Benghazi at­tacks and … “Dodd-Frank.”

Bush did not ex­plain why bank­ing reg­u­la­tions would make Clin­ton a lousy com­mand­er in chief.

No mat­ter, Sen. Marco Ru­bio of Flor­ida offered, Clin­ton is un­qual­i­fied to lead the U.S. mil­it­ary be­cause she “lied” to the fam­il­ies of the vic­tims of the Benghazi at­tacks about the raid’s cause. (The Wash­ing­ton Post called his cri­ti­cism a stretch. “The evid­ence for this claim is murky and open to in­ter­pret­a­tion,” Glenn Kessler wrote. “But Ru­bio really goes too far in sug­gest­ing that she told this to all of the fam­il­ies of the four who were killed in the ter­ror­ist at­tacks.”)

Front-run­ner Don­ald Trump re­newed his op­pos­i­tion to Muslim im­mig­ra­tion—“that could be the great Tro­jan horse”—and sug­ges­ted that his policy against Syr­i­an refugees stems from his cas­u­al ex­am­in­a­tion of tele­vi­sion foot­age. “Where are the wo­men?” he said, ap­par­ently re­fer­ring to crowds of Syr­i­an refugees, which in his eyes are dom­in­ated by “strong, power­ful young men.”

In the af­ter­math of ter­ror­ist at­tacks in Par­is and San Bern­ardino, Cali­for­nia, na­tion­al se­cur­ity has edged out the eco­nomy as the primary con­cern of many voters. Polls show Pres­id­ent Obama’s ap­prov­al rat­ing on fight­ing ter­ror­ism dropped as he struggled to strike a bal­ance between over­re­act­ing and un­der­re­act­ing.

Amer­ic­ans are jus­ti­fied to be afraid. Amer­ic­an lead­ers should work to calm the pub­lic. They should re­dir­ect anxi­et­ies to­ward sup­port of well-reasoned re­sponses that make the na­tion as safe as pos­sible without ca­reen­ing to­ward an­oth­er war over false pre­tenses.

Not this crew. Not these GOP pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates. They’re com­ing to scare us, Amer­ica.

Ron Fournier is the Senior Political Columnist and Editorial Director of National Journal. Prior to joining NJ, he worked at the Associated Press for 20 years, most recently as Washington Bureau Chief. A Detroit native, Fournier began his career in Arkansas, first with the Hot Springs ...
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